United States: Hegemonic Assertion and Exclusionary Commercialism

The United States anchors the event with 11 host cities, culminating at MetLife Stadium for the final and featuring AT&T Stadium for the semi-finals, thereby amplifying its commercial and cultural hegemony. Tourism inflows, media rights, and urban revitalization promise substantial revenues, aligning with broader U.S. market-driven sporting paradigms that prioritize revenue maximization. However, this approach engenders soft critiques: preliminary hotel surges exceeding 300% in host cities like New York and Los Angeles exacerbate local affordability crises, mirroring mega-event patterns where short-term booms yield uneven wealth distribution and displace vulnerable communities.​​

Ticketing dynamics further illuminate tensions between global commerce and fan equity. FIFA’s dynamic pricing model inflates high-demand seats into the thousands, with a nominal $60 Supporter Entry Tier dismissed as tokenistic amid resale markups and corporate allocations. This commercial tilt contrasts sharply with egalitarian football traditions elsewhere, subtly eroding the tournament’s universal appeal while inviting normative backlash on inclusivity. Security preparations, bolstered by $625 million in federal funding, intersect with domestic politics, immigration restrictions, and protest risks in polarized venues, thus potentially alienating international audiences and complicating U.S. soft power projections.​

Mexico: Symbolic Resonance Amid Peripheral Constraints

Mexico’s hosting, which is limited to three venues in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara, with Estadio Azteca’s opening match, carries profound symbolic freight, evoking its 1970 and 1986 legacies to assert cultural centrality in global football. Yet structural disparities dwarf these gains: U.S. dominance in venues and matches underscores North-South imbalances, challenging tripartite parity narratives within the USMCA framework. Here, the World Cup amplifies debates about economic spillovers versus social costs, where projected tourism and foreign direct investment through major sporting spectacles promise local growth, but long-term urban benefits remain contested, thus revealing inflated promises against persistent inequality, infrastructure debt, and security strains in less-resourced partners.​​

Sociopolitical headwinds further amplify these constraints. Public security concerns also intersect with economic inequality, risking heightened policing and displacement without addressing root governance deficits. The spectacle could become a platform for soft power projection, yet the political leverage gained from hosting, as a less affluent partner, remains limited by external commercial dynamics. In essence, FIFA’s revenue imperatives and institutional asymmetries position Mexico as a peripheral adjunct rather than a coequal.

Canada: Middle-Power Norms in a Constrained Arena

Canada’s modest allocation, i.e., two venues in Vancouver and Toronto, embodies middle-power norm entrepreneurship, emphasizing multiculturalism, indigenous reconciliation, and sustainability rhetoric to differentiate from U.S. commercialism. This aligns with Ottawa’s multilateral posture, leveraging the event for human rights signaling and inclusive branding. Nonetheless, practical frictions emerge: civil society critiques over land consultations, affordability protests, and fiscal burdens question the prestige calculus, echoing global mega-event litanies of opportunity costs outstripping legacies.​

U.S.-centric tensions strain collaborative facades. Tariff rhetoric and border securitization under the current administration test USMCA cohesion, while smaller-scale hosting limits Canada’s normative imprint. This bind illustrates middle powers‘ perennial challenge: pursuing principled diplomacy amid hegemonic imbalances, where soft power yields prove contingent on larger partners‘ agendas.​